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Kyle Busch was left frustrated after the Kobalt 400 at Las Vegas and initiated a pit road fight with Joey Logano. Photo by LAT PHOTOGRAPHIC

Opinion: Las Vegas NASCAR race provided something to talk about

Decreased downforce and a fight define early 2017 returns

March 12, 2017

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It took three weeks, but the 2017 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series season just earned its first buzzworthy moment of the year on Sunday at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

Thank goodness the final two laps provided some fascination, because there wouldn’t have been much to talk about otherwise. Brad Keselowski dominated much of the final stage but lost the Kobalt 400 when something broke on the No. 2 Team Penske Ford just before it took the white flag.

That allowed Martin Truex Jr. to come back and complete a clean sweep of all three stages and win his first race of the season. Meanwhile, Keselowski hobbled all the way back to fifth and inadvertently triggered a collision between Kyle Busch and Joey Logano.

The contact in turn three of the final lap resulted in additional contact in turn four that sent Busch spinning from fourth all the way to 22nd. Infuriated, Busch walked over to Logano on pit road and corked him right in the jaw.

A late-race on-track battle between Kyle Busch and Joey Logano resulted in multiple contacts, a spin and a post-race fight on pit road.Busch and Logano were racing inside the top 5 on the final lap ...

First and foremost, NASCAR must resist the urge to fine or penalize anyone involved in the post-race scuffle. This is NASCAR 101 regardless of how the politically correct believe the sport has evolved over the past decade.

NASCAR rose to national prominence thanks to a fight after the 1979 Daytona 500, and this is the kind of raw energy and passion that Monster Energy surely wanted to channel when it became the title sponsor back in December.

The NASCAR rulebook is somewhat vague. Busch did land a punch on Logano, which might force series officials to deduct 25-50 driver points and/or levy a $50,000-$100,000 fine. Confrontations without physical violence are stated to result in just a meeting.

But that’s too strict.

The first confrontation of a season should warrant just a meeting. Only if it continues to escalate, off the track or otherwise, should NASCAR then be forced to take action. There’s a fine line between discipline and allowing the inmates to run the asylum.

But one scuffle shouldn’t result in financial or championship point-deducting penalties.

NASCAR features gritty athletes in the heat of battle and that sort of uncut energy shouldn’t be totally discouraged -- least of all in the Monster Energy Cup Series era. And it’s certainly preferable to Matt Kenseth using his car as a weapon against Logano at Martinsville.

Pick your poison.

Fans and pundits also need to lay off the blame game. This happened on the last lap of a NASCAR Cup Series race. A slower car forced Busch to make a split-second decision that forced him into Logano. Now on tilt, Logano drove hard into turn four, washed up the track and wiped Busch out.

That’s not to assign blame -- that's simply a byproduct of hard racing on the final lap of a top-tier motorsports event. Logano said it wasn’t intentional, not that we should care, because it produced the kind of racing and post-race emotion that everyone has been clamoring for much of the past 10 years.

In a race whose aftermath left hometown driver Kyle Busch with a bloody forehead, Martin Truex Jr. passed the faltering car of Brad Keselowski on the white-flag lap and cruised to a sweep of all three ...

Beyond the extracurricular activity, the Kobalt 400 was just a standard race at Las Vegas, which is to say that it probably doesn’t warrant two races, because so few tracks do in the first place. But at least track officials were gifted marketing materials to sell two national touring triple-headers next season.

The most notable takeaway from the on-track product has been the early parity. Keselowski, Truex and Kevin Harvick have taken the early lead in the garage but the top 5 has seen a rewarding combination of names and teams. Of them, Chase Elliott and Kyle Larson have been the biggest breath of fresh air. Both youngsters could have easily won over the past three weeks and are near the top of the standings. In this conversation alone, we’ve mentioned all three manufacturers, veteran contenders and emerging young guns.

The racing has been decent by intermediate track standards, a testament to NASCAR’s efforts to decrease horsepower over the past three seasons. In short, NASCAR’s top division has serious momentum heading into the summer months.